Discovery of Taste Receptors in the Lungs Could Help People With Asthma Breathe Easier

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2010) — Taste receptors in the lungs? Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have discovered that bitter taste receptors are not just located in the mouth but also in human lungs. What they learned about the role of the receptors could revolutionize the treatment of asthma and other obstructive lung diseases.

"The detection of functioning taste receptors on smooth muscle of the bronchus in the lungs was so unexpected that we were at first quite skeptical ourselves," says the study's senior author, Stephen B. Liggett, M.D., professor of medicine and physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of its Cardiopulmonary Genomics Program.

Dr. Liggett, a pulmonologist, says his team found the taste receptors by accident, during an earlier, unrelated study of human lung muscle receptors that regulate airway contraction and relaxation. The airways are the pathways that move air in and out of the lungs, one of several critical steps in the process of delivering oxygen to cells throughout the body. In asthma, the smooth muscle airways contract or tighten, impeding the flow of air, causing wheezing and shortness of breath.

The taste receptors in the lungs are the same as those on the tongue. The tongue's receptors are clustered in taste buds, which send signals to the brain. The researchers say that in the lung, the taste receptors are not clustered in buds and do not send signals to the brain, yet they respond to substances that have a bitter taste.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101024144132.htm

[Jamastiene]

1. I love stuff like this. Fascinating.

Come to think of it, I can totally see a future Stephen King book that mentions it in some way if it isn't central to the plot.

It is good that it might can help people.

[StandingInLeftField]

2. I wonder if they somehow can detect acrid air that we breath.

I can see that as being an evolutionary positive.

[laconicsax]

3. Coming soon to a store near you!

Flavored air!